Susan's Scribblings the Blog

A three-day holiday weekend is coming up, which means that anybody who is on a diet will break it to enjoy cookouts with other like-minded people. If you are not one of the millions of people on a diet, you will eat more than usual, and if you’ve broken a diet, what the heck: pretend it’s December.

Those people who go away for the weekend are the most intrepid of all, because after such an excursion, their lives are never the same.

The general routine of a three-day holiday weekend goes something like this:

Since nobody at work got Friday off, except for somebody you think should not ever get a day off because they bum around all day anyway, you can’t start loading the car until you get home. At 7:00. Because of traffic jams on all the freeways starting two hours before your shift ends.

Your car becomes a moving van filled with everything a family needs to pretend they are not on vacation. The kids have outgrown the beachwear you bought a month ago, your tan lines don’t match any outfit you chose for the trip, and the dog has to go to grandma’s because the pet boarders won’t accept him since he managed to hunt down a metropolis of fleas and welcome them onto his torso yesterday (of course you had to lie to grandma about this, or she wouldn’t take him). The vet office is closed.

The kids whine because the gaming console can’t come with you, and because you chose to vacation in a dry beach community, the beer and spritzers have to stay home. The adults pack for six days, and the kids pack as if they’re only leaving home for two hours (besides, they hate the clothes you got them, and they don’t fit), but neither knows this when you finally claw through the piles of stuff in the cabin of your vehicle and head out.

After spending two days’ worth of funds on snacks for the children en route, you reach the destination. The kids immediately want to hit the fun parts of town; you want to flop on the bed and sleep, but first somebody has to prepare the place for the stay, meaning the wife sets up and then drops dead asleep an hour later. She then awakens and finds that the bed won’t support her; neither will the husband, who is missing the cell fiber cushioned deluxe mattress at home with the TV within range.

Meanwhile, grandma calls and says she and the dog are scratching like crazy.

Next morning, continental breakfast doesn’t agree with your vegan daughter or your gluten-free son, and the husband has fully realized that they need to leave town just to grab a beer. The wife forgot her nail file, and an acrylic popped off while she was sleeping. The son wears the same colorless shirt from yesterday and says he forgot to pack anything to replace it. The family ends up having breakfast at a chain that, fortunately, is the same as the one at home, but more expensive.

The wife visits the chain drug store for glue to reattach her acrylic nail, then they go to the local fashion store and nab the best bargain shirt for the son so they can visit a nice restaurant. The daughter runs into some friends from school and goes off to have a vegan barbecue with other, cooler parents.

By the time the weekend is over, the parents are over their spending limit, the kids are distraught because nobody remembered phone chargers, and grandma isn’t on speaking terms with anybody.

Break the diet at home, people. Vacations away from home are for the professionals only.

The world has had enough to rant about these past few weeks, but I was fortunate enough to actually receive two compliments from customers this week. It’s never happened before! Really. When the “Contact Us” department is really the complaint department, it’s tough to plow through so much negativity for what seems like forever. Finally it paid off.

To celebrate, here are some amusing snippets, bits of advice and old favorite anecdotes:

• Back in the old days of photo developing, a brother and sister visited the local shop and presented the owner with a picture; in it was a cow, viewed from the left side, which was apparently being milked, for out of sight by her hidden right flank were the legs of a stool, a bucket underneath her udders, and two booted feet. “This is the only picture we have of our Uncle Carl,” the brother said. “Can you edit out the cow so we can see him?”
• A social media post commented on historical recordings: “Beethoven has been dead for centuries, but there are streaming recordings of his music. How did they do that?”
• A man went to his doctor and complained, “Every time I pass gas, I make a noise that sounds like ‘Honda.'” The doctor replied, “You need a dentist for that; it’s caused by an abscess in your tooth.” The man was astonished, “Gee doctor, how could you tell?” The reply: “Everybody knows that abscess makes the fart go Honda.”
• A man was at the side of the road after an automobile accident crying, “My Porsche, my lovely new Porsche!” The first officer on scene shook his head, “You’re so materialistic, haven’t you noticed that your whole left arm has been severed?” The man looked and screamed in horror, “My Rolex!”
• If you really want to spend some interesting time with the younger (under 20) folks in your life, gather them around a rotary phone and ask them to make a call.
• Don’t look like a tourist when you rent a vehicle on vacation; first thing, check the dash’s icons for the little gas pump and note the arrow next to it on one side or the other, as that will tell you what side you should pull up to at the gas station to fill up.
• If you get a pull in a sweater, the simplest way to pull the intrusive yarn to the inside is to ask the local kid with braces for a dental floss threader, preferably the loop type, which will easily help you slide the pull through without complicated maneuvers.
• I cut a paper cup to the dimensions of my morning measurement of steel-cut oats, and note the weight of my cereal bowl so I can measure to the gram my portion of boxed cereal (you add the weight of the cereal serving to the weight of the bowl).
• Want to cut more sugar out of your life? Substitute either a mandarin or clementine for orange juice, which is concentrated and packs a load of sweetness per glass. The fruit will add fiber to your diet, too. Another alternate may be vitamin water, which often has over a full day’s vitamin C.
• Last one: the principal interrupted the class Zoom meeting for attendance figures from the teacher, but she forgot to separate them by gender. “I have thirty in attendance and one scheduled absent,” she told him. “Ms. Delatroix, I need sex,” he replied.

Are you groaning? Contact us.

When you work in customer service, especially as long as I have, the amount of abuse can be staggering. It wasn’t always that way. In the good old days, customers were as polite as those behind the counter or on the phone, but now there is also email, and over the years people seem to be coming unhinged.

Here are some examples of Karen behavior–a term applied to those people who overreact to issues, negative or not–that I have encountered, so you can see how not to become just like them and have a better experience.

When starting to register a complaint, people have a habit of beginning with what I call the “break out the violins moment,” in which one opens with a sentence such as, “I have been with you for so-many-years.” Naturally most businesses value long-time customers, but our experience often is that you only contact us with a problem, so this sentence immediately prepares us for something unpleasant. If you want to mention your years of loyalty, save it until closer to the end of the tirade, when you are looking for a certain type of resolution. If the experience was really that bad as a loyal customer, you may get a better outcome this way.

The offshoot of this is the person who tells us that “every time I use you, it goes wrong.” Most places don’t stay in business if they consistently do things improperly, so you may want to consider that something else is happening to cause that outcome; or maybe you’re just torturing yourself.

Using what was termed in a Star Trek movie as “colorful metaphors” will also cause mental defensive maneuvers to be put in place. I have seen emails with the F bomb dropped, but also rather laughable terminology such as “pointless program” and “idiotic instructions” (note the use of the same letter in both words for maximum effect). If you complain with a thesaurus at hand, you’re just wasting time. Be succinct and simple (see, I can do it, too), and you may fare better.

Accusations about websites via email can be irksome. I wish I could watch a person actually navigate a screen before registering a complaint, because if a company’s website flubbed as often as they get comments about how awful it is, incoming business would shut down almost instantly, and the responsible site builders would be the laughingstock of the industry. Often people just don’t use the scrolling properly, enter data incorrectly or skip something that needs not to be skipped. Take your time; don’t try to do a process on your ten-minute break or lunch half hour.

Accusations are a real hoot, because often the charges have nothing to do with anything. Somebody this past week said the online staff were being “predatory” by not placing a specific option as a button on our webpage. That was a head scratcher if ever I saw one. If there were predatory behavior, it would be in the form of seeking out information, which often comes in button form. These types of negative comments usually lead to a back-and-forth conversation in which the complainer is determined to bully the staff into submission. It never works. Companies have terms and conditions, and they’re readily available. If you don’t like the terms, discuss and decide how you want to proceed, but seeking exceptions just because you are you don’t normally fly.

Mentioning one’s credentials to bolster a comment can also be hilarious. Emails with second grade spelling from somebody with a supposed four-year degree cancel each other out.

Another big complaint that has come down the line recently is the one about treating new customers better than the current ones. If I could respond to those jabs, I would tell them the story about a freebie I received for a magazine subscription, when a few months later the same magazine offered a different premium, and I wanted that one as well. That first premium was a cassette tape which has since been consigned to a used record store, and I’m glad I didn’t get a new one, because I enjoyed the first one, and it’s one per customer. If you didn’t get your one, that’s a different story.

Anyway, anybody who would cheat a new customer out of the same experience they had when they were a new customer is a bit of a boor if you ask me. Some experiences in life are designed to be had once.

I will now end this one experience you were kind enough to sit through, with a short tale; for the first time in ages, an email came from a customer who began by saying thanks for the services provided over the years, went on to say that he felt he may have done something to cause the problem he brought to our attention, and asked if we could help. Which was done easily.

Such interactions should not be the rarity. Just as Karens should not exist as a grumpy type of customer.

Some movies have traditional viewing dates: Star Wars fans like to watch their favorite episode(s) on May 4th (a pun on “May the Force be With You”), and a few weeks ago near Easter time ABC television aired The Ten Commandments. One year they didn’t run it, and the public protest was so great, they agreed to run it annually from then on.

I picked up a tradition for May Day which has a multi-layered purpose. On May Day, I view a movie called The Wicker Man (1973). There is a newer version starring Nicholas Cage, and I do like the actor, but the original has an atmosphere which can’t be replicated.

The film, directed by Robin Hardy, deals with religion, ritual, traditions, law, and is a combination horror and mystery. A police sergeant named Neil Howie (Edward Woodward, the original Equalizer before Queen Latifah and Denzel Washington) receives an anonymous letter asking him to investigate the remote island of Summerisle, where it’s claimed a young girl has gone missing without a care from her family or the island’s residents. He flies there by small aircraft and meets with ignorance at every turn; most people deny such a girl has ever lived on the island. When they do concede that she may be a resident, they don’t appear moved to aid him.

Howie is a conservative, stalwart Christian, and finds his investigation on the island trying, as it is populated solely by pagans, and he witnesses several ancient rituals and topical songs at the local inn/tavern. He makes an appointment to meet with Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee), who openly tells Howie of the island’s history and of the religious clerics having left because of paganism and the unnatural cultivating of the famous apples imported to the mainland. He invites Howie to continue hunting down clues, which begin to form a horrific truth from which Howie may not escape.

The film contains sexuality, nudity and some interesting dichotomies as Howie navigates the search; he is warned and encouraged in various ways to lay off, but he is determined to solve what happened to young Rowan Morrison, culminating in the island’s celebration of May Day, including frivolity and sacrifices to assure their continuing livelihood amidst failing apple production, and Howie is a witness to it all.

The story is disturbing, but I won’t give key points away. What does matter in watching an “art” film of this type is keeping an open mind to differing points of view; while Howie tries to get everybody to obey the law when they have other ideas, he stubbornly refuses to see the danger in front of him.

It’s a coincidence that May Day falls on a Sunday this year. My watching this movie may seem rather out of place due to its content, but it has a strong message about faith on both sides. So it seems fitting.

I came upon an article online the other day which said in short, “If you are of a certain age, you must get rid of these things in your home, because they make you look old.”

Gee, I already have enough going on in life to make me look old, and now I should also blame the stuff in my home for making matters worse?

Apparently your floors say a lot about your age, and right now you should not have shag carpeting, or wall-to-wall carpeting, in your home. I have found nothing more comfortable in winter than having carpet under my feet. Bare floors, by their very nature, are cold. But no, carpet is banished from the kingdom because some unknown resource of questionable authority says so. The article also pooh-poohed little rugs on bare floors. It’s nothing on your floor, or nothing.

In the kitchen, I am hopeless because my floor is linoleum. Heaven forbid! It isn’t even a dated pattern, or tiles: it’s one piece and modern enough to blend in with my current appliances, all of which are less than 20 years old.

I committed a sin by buying a dust ruffle for the bed. However, I think I redeemed myself by throwing out all the old spices in the kitchen in one de-cluttering session. So they cancel each other out.

A few items on the list confused me, such as toilet lid covers and pedestal mats for in front of the loo (by the way, I don’t use the latter), and frame-less pictures, as well as too many framed photos placed on tables around the home. Gee, if you have a home and a family, why wouldn’t you want to see some of their faces? As for the lid cover, there is nothing more jarring than the clank of the lid hitting against the tank when you want to eliminate in peace. I’m keeping that. Sorry.

I was relieved to read that I am still somewhat cool, since I have no farmhouse-related decor, popcorn ceilings or glib phrases on wall plaques. I did recently purchase a wood strip sign from the shore, because I wanted to have something in the living room to remind me of my fun at the beach. I retain the right to keep that. I also have not kept old paperwork or greeting cards, paperbacks (it’s hardcover or nothing, unless it wasn’t published that way) or socks with no mates. I don’t wear socks.

So I guess I’m decorating to look more my age. If I tried to look new age, I would probably appear immature.

I went to see a show, and a trend has arisen which bothers me. It’s about the programs we receive as we enter the theater, which are often the well-known and popular Playbills(R). An attendant will often hand one to you, and as you take your seat and silence your mobile devices, you can read about the cast and crew, learn about the playwrights and authors and catch an article or two about Broadway or the world of performance art. You may also find a place for dinner or a retirement home for Aunt Millie in the ads.

Fans collect them; nostalgists keep them in a binder or box, and some people discard them. At the theater I visited, there is a large brochure holder full of them, on the wall near the door, and folks who don’t want their copies simply put them back.

It’s a funny type of recycling, and I find it confusing.

Though I’ve never heard of anybody catching a disease from a written work, some may wonder if germs can be picked up from a glossy billet which has been held by somebody else. The fact that an attendant handed it to you in the first place doesn’t seem to bother anybody. Sometimes the theater employees wear dress gloves. However, we are still in the waxing and waning of a global illness, so we have unknown fears to contend with.

The number of trees used to print theater programs is likely not the same as magazines or books, but with the house filled with people who I saw actively engaging their mobile devices to place them on silent, maybe it’s time to go digital with Playbill(R).

I experienced a digital program during the holiday season, and it was easy to access. Of course, I didn’t have something to take home as a souvenir or to add to my collection. There are pros and cons for both.

I just hope that we can always enjoy Playbill(R) and the experience of live theater well into my old age. Or at least as long as I have room to collect my programs.

One of the best inventions in our modern world is cloud storage. It’s aptly named, because everything in cloud storage is like that fluffy stuff in the sky that you can’t touch but seems to exist as some mysterious aura above our heads. The purpose of cloud storage is to hold cyber stuff so you can find it from anywhere. This means that if I wrote something in Abu Dhabi, I could retrieve it from Costa Rica.

Unfortunately, if I left my keys in Costa Rica, I probably couldn’t find them using cloud storage. It isn’t lost and found.

At first I was distrustful of cloud storage, which is how I found myself with stuff on more than one device and no way to retrieve them all. Now, I sign on, and there it is like magic as if, by prestidigitation, somebody pulled stuff I wrote in 2014 out of a hat.

And it’s not on paper, so the magician’s rabbit (or the dog) didn’t eat it. This means that homework can be stored on the cloud, which eliminates the excuse that the dog ate it, because writing won’t be on paper anymore.

The trees have one more thing to be grateful to the clouds for, even though they’re not the same clouds. Going digital will help the forests regrow, because we won’t use as much paper.

For authors, not using paper adds a new perspective to the craft. Looking at words onscreen is not the same as on paper, and even with new digital writing devices, it’s not the same experience while proofreading. Some devices try to replicate the experience of paper, with paper sound effects and the look of pencil or pen drawing. Submitting manuscripts is going from paper to sending PDFs via email. In the “good old days,” manuscripts came in a stack of pages in a special box, much like senate bills, only smaller. Reports used to be white papers stacked inside a folder and given eye-catching covers. One of the first things we learned in school was how to prepare a report. Now report covers are also going away.

You can also save artwork to the cloud, which frees up refrigerators from children’s artwork. This means we’re still not fully free of paper, but we are using it as backup.

I admit to missing some of the old-fashioned ways of doing things, but I have a good feeling about cloud storage and going digital. My latest device was so easy to set up, I was amazed. I took it out of the box, and within minutes, the cloud brought all my stuff to me.

And these clouds are so smart, they don’t even produce rain.

I realized this week that I have to get out of the chair more often. Research shows that sitting for prolonged periods can cause obesity and insomnia, which explains why we’re all getting fat and sleeping fewer hours than we’d like.

At least I know that I can still walk quite a few miles when motivated: I just walked a good 6-8 miles while carrying about ten extra pounds of stuff in a shopping tote. Which I had to pay for, because of the new bag rules going into effect everywhere. Shopping is costly, and so are bags.

After I bought the bag, I went to an employee appreciation event and they gave me a free tote bag. I had to hold back from being an ingrate and saying to them, “You should’ve been with me an hour ago, when I could’ve used this tote bag to haul my purchases for free.

This is how my car has become a repository for bags which never seem to leave the trunk.

We’re in the habit of going into stores empty-handed and coming out with bags full of stuff. Some ancient idiocy has programmed us to feel silly carrying empty bags into a place, so we’ll have to get rid of this mindset.

It could become a fashionable, socially acceptable habit to actually have a bag for each store, and proudly take it inside to fill up with purchases.

The next big thing will be to come up with bags that won’t embarrass people when they bring them inside. The more expandable (and collapsible), the better.

The habit of walking is a healthy one to cultivate, and I have done my share, but when my job requires my presence in front of a computer screen for a full day, it’s hard to get any steps in. I usually work some in by doing errands during my breaks and lunch. The time doesn’t seem to slow down, either, during breaks, but fly as if somebody has accelerated the natural order of its passage.

A friend of mine retired and now walks daily, and she walks across entire town borders. Because she has the time. I don’t even think she owns a watch anymore, unless it’s a fitness device.

So I’m now committed to stepping out a bit more, and the warmer weather will make it easier to do. I just have to remember that, if I stop in a store, I must bring a bag with me to put my purchases in. I wonder if I should use a plastic bag, or would that be considered unfashionable?

Do people who twitch annoy you? I can only imagine the most shallow people would be annoyed by the presence of a person who may have a bodily dysfunction like a twitch. This also applies to scoffing at the visibly challenged, such as those who have mobility assistance devices, people with birthmarks, acne, scars, or anything which a select class of people finds intolerable. You may identify as somebody who finds–ahem–imperfections an inconvenience to your daily existence.

If this describes you, you may also be the type who stays at home, draws the blinds, and clutches the pearls if you so much as raise a bump on the skin while plucking a facial hair.

You’re bringing us all down, friend.

A series of prescription commercials are directed at a condition known as tardive dyskinesia, a side effect of some types of anti-depressant medications. TD can cause involuntary mouth or limb movements such as twitching. So can some chronic conditions. People suffering from these symptoms cannot control them. You, however, can control how you react to them. The folks on the ads say that they feel people are staring at their TD instead of at the person.

So people make other people feel bad about themselves, they take medication to feel better, and they still get picked on for having side effects. That sounds like a typical game plan of a bully: destroy everything until the victim is destroyed.

What kind of human being does this stuff? Hope that doesn’t describe you.

Life is not about catering to your ideals; they’re about blending all our lives into one ideal world in which everybody has a place. Some people are quick to ruin life for others because of something they perceive as a flaw, but the truth is the flaws we can see are much better than those we cannot.

Some ugly stuff is in our souls.

I don’t stare at flaws: I engage people at the soul level. I bring a smile and pleasant words and patience. Others pick apart and complain, swear and interrupt the flow of time with impatience. You may know some of these high-horse riding folks as Karens.

Karen is a nice name, not to be confused with an attitude.

Since some medications may have side effects, a patient may weigh the benefits of one over the other. In some cases, they take another medication to counteract the side effects of the one causing the TD. Now that’s dedication; they don’t want to sit at home with the blinds drawn and clutch their pearls. They want to live their lives.

Next time you get ready to stare at somebody who is twitching, just don’t do it.

I took a Me Day to visit the shore. After over two decades of not going to the beach, I thought it was time to return, so I’m renting a property to take some time off just to write and relax. As part of the process of reviewing the place in person and finalizing the details, I decided to get my walking in on the boardwalk while I was there. Boy am I tired.

The driving was not bad for a spring weekend. In the absence of maps, I tried to use my car’s service to offer turn-by-turn directions, but it wanted me to take the toll road, so I discarded that option. Instead I headed out using the main highway leading to the popular beach side resorts, and turned when the signs told me to. Worked fine for me.

The issue I had was not recognizing anything along the route. The usual landmarks have been replaced by sprawling malls and housing developments, and I think I completely missed one of my father’s favorite shortcuts simply because it wasn’t there (or at least it didn’t look like I expected it to), so I drove flat out on one road until a turnoff appeared for the main strip to the southern shore towns. If I had stayed on the same road, eventually I would have driven my car into the Atlantic Ocean, so it was just a matter of making a turn before that happened.

Some things have not changed in over twenty years; the little tykes’ theme park was still there, along with the familiar farmer’s markets, the hubcap emporium featuring a tall tree of them as a roadside attraction, and an abundance of mobile home parks and campgrounds along the way. It was a pleasant excursion, though my favorite radio station lost its signal less than a quarter of a way to the destination.

The visitor’s center used to be a little building on a spit of land off the bridge, but it has become a modern and complex place to figure out how to enter. I missed the turnoff, so I didn’t visit. The truck behind me, who was in an immense hurry, is partly to blame for the distraction.

Once I tended to the business portion of the trip, I dropped off some donations at the animal shelter, then went to the boardwalk and strolled nearly ten full blocks, then took off my shoes and walked barefoot along the sand and dipped my toes in the water. The ocean was bracing, the breeze strong but tolerable, and the sand felt good on my feet. By the time I turned for home, I was pleasantly achy and tired, so I know I’ll sleep well tonight. Also, my wallet is lighter, because I made a gift shop stop.

Come summer, I’ll be back to enjoy some peace and quiet. If I can ignore the call of the sea.